A History of Communications : Media and Society from the by Marshall T. Poe

A background of Communications advances a conception of media that explains the origins and impression of other kinds of verbal exchange - speech, writing, print, digital units and the web - on human background within the long-term. New media are 'pulled' into frequent use via huge historic developments and those media, as soon as in common use, 'push' social associations and ideology in predictable instructions. This view permits us to determine for the 1st time what's actually new concerning the web, what's now not, and the place it's taking us.

Surveys theoretical views at the mass media over the last thirty years. From statements via Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard to contemporary paintings by means of Ien Ang and Ann grey, sections talk about the creation and legislation of the mass media; the media textual content; and the reception and intake of the media.

Media heritage is thousands, even billions, of years previous. that's the premise of this pioneering and provocative booklet, which argues that to effectively comprehend modern media tradition we needs to set out from fabric realities that precede media themselves—Earth’s historical past, geological formations, minerals, and effort.

This ebook is the 1st number of essays to discover the altering relationships among struggle, media, and the general public from a multidisciplinary standpoint and over a longer ancient interval. it's also the 1st textbook for college kids during this box, discussing a variety of theoretical strategies and methodological instruments for reading the character of those relationships.

Additional resources for A History of Communications : Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet

Sample text

2. Privacy → Segmentation → Closure + Privatism. The more private a medium, the more segmented its network; the more segmented a network, the more social practices realized in it will be closed. The link between segmentation and closure is established by the innate human desire to conceal: if humans can easily use a medium to remove certain activities from public gaze – to privatize them – they will, and will establish corresponding social practices. Segmentation facilitates hiding. In segmented networks, therefore, we should see multiple private social practices and an ideology – privatism – that justiﬁes them.

But, as Dessalles shows, that just isn’t so. When we come across a relevant fact, we automatically notice it and remember it. We may even be impelled to investigate it despite considerable danger. But the force of our mental compulsion to be relevant does not end there. Once we have a relevant fact in our possession, we cannot help but relate it to someone. The fact that humans will speak reﬂexively is widely known, but reﬂexive speaking is usually understood to be limited to physically or emotionally prompted outbursts.

Different historical terrains – in our case media networks – either facilitate or impede the fulﬁllment of those needs. According to whether they do the one or the other, different social practices will emerge. Marx also said something clever about the relationship between social practices and values. ”27 What he’s saying, inter alia, is that what we actually do in relation to others determines to a large extent what we think we should do. This is exactly the reverse of what most people think about the relationship between actions and values.